The most exciting event of my childhood was going to the circus.

The smell of cotton candy, peanuts and buttered popcorn

mingled with the snap of the whip and the frenzy of lions’ roars.

Silence reigned as we watched the barefoot woman on the trapeze  

release and fall into the arms of her partner who dropped her.

She seized his foot and climbed to his shoulders then waved.

A white faced clown with a red nose circled the tent on a unicycle,

oblivious to everything until he ran into a pile of green poo 

next to a trumpeting elephant standing on hind legs.

The clown fell headfirst into the droppings,

sat up and wiped his eyes, then pulled a

bucket from his pocket to pour water over his head.

Our ungainly gang of nine-year-olds roared with laughter.

The ringmaster, his top hat askew, blew a whistle and pointed to

horses circling, their riders doing back flips and handstands.

After they exited, tigers followed in a line to sit at attention.

The largest opened his mouth to let the trainer insert his head.

We held our breath, the clown juggling pots and pans.

Then we yelled ourselves hoarse as stilt walkers turned

balloons into dogs, releasing them to descend on the crowd.

Years later, I am the only one who wants to go when the circus comes.

The clowns are not funny, my friends say, the acrobats worn and old,

I go alone and sit with my bag of popcorn, checking my watch

while trying to recreate those feelings of exhilaration and excitement.

When I leave, I am much older than when I entered,

disillusioned by the unraveling of my memories of enchantment.

you tell me that i don’t seem like someone with borderline personality disorder

i tell you that i mask 

i mask so well that sometimes i don’t even know what i am feeling 

i mask so much i never know when it’s okay to take it off

i spend so much energy masking that i sleep for twelve hours a night 

i mask to survive

the day, the stigma, the sterotypes

i mask to save my friendships 

because i know i am too much 

when i don’t mask 

disaster strikes, my world crumples

no one knows what to do when i am not okay 

trick is, i am never okay 

i just mask to save my life 

& to save your day 

It seems like everyday I hear 
some tidbit of trendy information 
repeated as the truth

and the person repeating
has only heard it from someone else,
someone who thought that they were right. 

The topic has been left unexplored,
the knowledge not in question
repeated as the truth
wholly unexplored
unearned and unchallenged. 

I don’t see the point in correcting.

I don’t want to hurt the fragile egos of the masses, I don’t need to say “Have you considered…?” or “My training and my experience have shown me something different”

There are too many people who think they are authorities, and too many people listening to them and believing that they are. I have always attempted to test every theory, always questioned any truth, particularly if I am to repeat it without a disclaimer.
Do not accept what is handed to you. Do not accept what you do not know for yourself. 

Do not even accept that your own mind has not skipped this important step.
And even if you do test, do consider there may be more knowledge, additional truth
that you are unaware of.

Before you open your mouth
to spread one more fact you heard from a person who heard from a person on the internet,

consider that it is just a theory. An untested theory. No matter how apparent was the authority. It is often the authority who is posing as authority. In fact, this is what authority is mostly,

-posing. 

To my lover:

You return,
worn from the weight
of another long night
quiet,
not from absence,
but from having given too much of yourself
to a world that doesn’t always give back.

And still,
you come to us
to soft arms,
to open laughter,
to the sanctuary we’ve made together.

I see you,
and I thank heaven for the quiet ways you love.

Each kiss you give
is a prayer,
each embrace a remembering
of who we were
before the chaos,
and who we are becoming
because of it.

Yes, it’s harder.
Yes, it’s heavier.
But it’s richer,
truer,
holy even
because of what we carry
side by side.

You hold the world on your back
like anointed earth,
and you do it with grace
that humbles me.

If it were me,
I might have vanished
like wind through trees.
But you stay.
You root.
You rise.

I love you more
than any storm could shake,
more than flesh,
more than time.

You are
my sacred place
my living altar.

Maybe this life
isn’t the one you imagined,
but I pray you find
the divine in it.
In us.
In me.

Your love lives in my bones,
my breath,
my being.

No soul
has ever touched mine
as deeply,
as wholly,
as you.

Nah for real you really from Kentucky?
I been to Kentucky and you aren’t like
them folks I met on the border of Tenessee.
You really from Kentucky? ‘Cause you ain’t sound 
like it; I don’t hear no drawl or twang or “kawhrn
bread” comin’ outta that voice of your’s.

Nah fuh reel u reely frum K’ntucky? Shucks.
That mean you ride them horses all bareback
and shit? You walk through briars without them 
shoes? ‘U must be one o’ ‘dem religious types
beltin’ ou’ bIble versus an’ votin’ rePublican.
‘U mus’ be one o’ dem “good ol’ boys.”

Is you Really one O’ ‘dem Kentucky boys
ridin’ ATV’s and baaass fishin’? Rip roarin’
thru dem fiels uh bluegrass, drinkin’ lite beer
by’n open bonfire ‘n uh sundown town.
Goin’ do duh state fair with’n th’m blue ribb’ns.
Havin’ illicit relayshuns with’n yur cuhsin?

Nah. You CAN’T be from a place like Kentucky.
You talk too different. You ain’t got an accent
bouncin’ between poverty and antisemite.
You musta lived sum’were else, like New Yawk
or Denvuh. You been aroun’ the wes’ side, eas’ sigh
nort’ sign, Nawh’leans? Dey really writin’ ovuh dare’uh?

Yes sir. Yes mamn. Yes them. I am from Kentucky.
Fuck you for thinking so little of us.

“I wonder if you knew how I watched,
            How I crowded before the spearmen.”   
                                              H. D. “Loss”  

Forbidden to say who you were by a geis     
laid while you swam in my womb,
your father could not acknowledge you, a stranger,
despite the twinish appearance.  

Allowed to teach you all I knew except
the javelin of lightning – your father’s demand –
left you vulnerable to the champions’s thrust.
Had he seen me watching, the hero of Eire  

might have guessed, but sword play blinded his eyes
to all but the skill of the youth before him.
Who was this foreign warrior with the lilt of Skye on his tongue
and fine knowledge in combat?

Cuchulainn forgot his own curse
laid before his son’s birth, a seed of destruction.
I watched the grass of Connaught bend with your blood
as Cuchulaiinn grasped reality

in the ring on your hand.
Why had he not noticed, he stammered,
as your face fell pallid.
You died in his arms.  

This mourning mother returns
to an island of mottled boulders
along the cool-lipped sea
to tear an altar on the Isle of Skye.

                    “Look not upon me, because I am black,
                     because the sun hath looked upon me.”

                                               — Song of Solomon 1:6a


Wisdom is the language of light & shadow
& when offered the divine, you chose

to straddle that collision, loving the Lord,
walking in the statutes of David your father,

but sacrificing & burning incense on the high places.
I cannot judge your ways; I cannot comprehend you

separated by millennia, you with that wisdom, but—
I wonder how illuminated the blessing, laid beside

the dark & deep of its perversion.  What greater temptation
did you embrace & face entanglement:  Malevolence

of  antediluvian spirits,  or the wiles
& ways of seven hundred wives—

three hundred concubines besides?  What wisdom
lies with audacious hubris—thinking you could please

that many women—or control
that many demons?  And yet

He still looked upon you, still spoke
& wrote of you, with sweet esteem…

at least until His anger burned & tore
the kingdom away from you.

Yet–when scripture selects a song of love—
to persist the centuries, whether Queens or Princesses

or any other truth of identity, your serenade rose above—
even—the poetry of your father.  Your banner

over her was love; she sat down under your shadow
with great delight, your fruit was sweet to her taste.

She called you apple tree among the trees of the wood
& I cannot help but see that Rembrandt Triangle:

Wisdom, & Apples, & Intimacy—
your pale against her dark—

that final temptation buried
within a core of shadows.

*Layout mattered/was essential to me on this one.  Image won’t post here, but on FB*

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4321572958071740

Up on that Royal
balcony, revealing his
unique self by that
tongue, eye rolls, Royal hand waves
upstaging all the Royals.

Inside, glass, tube, Dune
out, Fall Aster stalks
host to rayon spider webs

rain-worn hillpeak’s court
Blacktop Cosmologies
Veins to warm the Vacuum

I didn’t have time to write a poem–
no visions in my head;
no clever rhymes or metaphors–
inspiration dead

I thought I’d put something down,
but nothing came to mind–
the harder I tried to think,
the more blank, the more blind 

perhaps another time
I’ll have something of worth to say–
until then, this page is blank–
I’ll go on with my day